Now that the actress and Goop founder has seven Vogue US covers to her name, you could fairly consider her an expert Vogue girl. But Paltrow’s relationship with the magazine didn’t have a picture-perfect start in 1996, when celebrity covers were still rare. “For me, being asked to be on the cover of Vogue was the hugest deal, and I was so honored,” Paltrow recalls. “And actually, the first shoot that we did didn’t go well.” Coddington, who styled the nervous Emma star—then just 23—for the Steven Meisel-lensed story, remembers things similarly: “It was a bit of a nightmare.” Hey, all’s well that ends well.
An offhand comment from Tom Ford’s late husband changed the trajectory of his career
Though Tom Ford’s tenure as the creative director of Gucci has become the stuff of legend, his first collection for the luxury brand in 1994 was, well, something of a flop. “I always tell what I think…it was extremely boring!” laments longtime Vogue editor Carlyne Cerf du Dudzeele, and even now, Ford doesn’t disagree. It took some simple advice from journalist and fashion editor Richard Buckley, Ford’s longtime partner, to turn things around: “Somehow, you’ve got to make it sexy,” Buckley said. Ford recalls that “just that line propelled me to a time when things were sexy for me”—specifically, the last days of Studio 54—and lo and behold…he delivered.
The next (and final) three episodes of In Vogue: The 90s air on Friday, September 20.
